Chapter 0220 – Like a Shadow
”Boss! Teacher Han! You guys look behind you!”
Xiao Du ran over to a few other tourists, gasping for breath, his face a little pale.
”Back there?” Guo Miao glanced behind her, and nothing strange appeared on the dim and depressing long corridor.
”Mannequins! The mannequins are coming after us!”
By Du Chaoqin shouting like this, the crowd that had managed to walk a few meters farther inside stopped again.
”Could you have misread it?” Song An softly comforted Du, but he himself moved towards Guo Miao’s side.
”Nope! It’s really moving!” Xiao Du slowed his breath, “Come and see for yourselves, those dolls were at the end of the left passage when we first saw them, and now they’ve run to the intersection of the left and right passages!”
”Don’t panic.” Teacher Han looked calm: “The dolls will move on their own, I’ve seen it three years ago, it’s a haunted house in Japan with a doll theme, where the small-sized dolls have all kinds of mechanical parts installed inside them, and they can move and change their facial expressions on their own; four-fifths of the large-sized dolls are props, and the remaining one-fifth are the actors who are mixed in with them.”
”It’s real people playing the roles?” Hearing Mr. Han’s words, Xiao Du became even more puzzled, and he began to become uncertain in his own mind.
”When I first came in, I noticed the mannequins in the left passage.” Teacher Han clasped his hands in front of his chest, “Those mannequins are one-to-one in size with living people, as if they were made from a reverse mold of a living person. You guys have to figure out one thing, including us at Tanto Sickbay, the dolls that act as ordinary props have physical and cosmetic flaws because the cost of a perfect doll is too high at around thirty thousand dollars, and it requires top masters to make them before they can be made, and very few haunted houses can afford them.”
”Then why would he this haunted house spend a lot of money to make such a mannequin?” Night Careful had been taking notes with her small book, and she didn’t know what she had written.
”It’s simple, it means that those dolls are a very important scare point in his haunted house!”
Han Qiuming stroked his chin, his gaze falling on Night Beware through the thick lenses, “Living actors mixed in with simulated mannequins can work wonders at critical moments, like the situation Xiao Du encountered just now. At first glance, it looks like the dolls are moving by themselves, but in fact it is the actors mixed in them moving the dolls forward together. If we hide in the shadows and secretly observe, we might be able to see this scene.”
Next to him, Song An also nodded, “Teacher Han is right on this point, a year ago, our Tanto Hospital also tried a similar scare tactic, it’s just a pity that the dolls were made to be too fake, and were recognized by the tourists at a glance.”
”So that’s how it is.” Xiao Du suddenly realized, and his face looked a little better, “Just now, it really scared me, those dolls were so realistically made that I thought they could move on their own.”
”Think with your feet and you’ll know it’s impossible.” Teacher Han’s tone was certain, and what he said made sense: “If it wasn’t for the time constraints, I would have hid in this house and recorded the process of the actors moving the dolls for you.”
”Alright, move on and find the recorder.” Guo Miao always felt that things weren’t that simple, but he couldn’t find a reason to refute Teacher Han.
”Old Guo, there are two things we need to pay attention to about that recorder.” Teacher Han wasn’t afraid on his mouth, but in his heart, he had already developed a deep sense of wariness towards Chen Ge’s haunted house, “Surname Chen hid our recorder in the third sick building scene ahead of time, he must have made enough preparations, and there should be something scary waiting near the recorder.”
”I know without you saying it.” Guo Miao walked ahead, the bedding on the floor was piled up haphazardly, stepping on it had a strange feeling, as if he was stepping in bundles of hair.
”This is just the first point, I have another thing to tell you, have you noticed that the rules of the game he set up are strange?”
”Strange in what way?”
”Finding the tape recorder isn’t a pass, you have to take it out of the third sick building for the game to be over.”
”That tape recorder itself is ours, isn’t it normal for us to bring it out now?” Du interjected.
”I feel like you all underestimated the insidiousness of this haunted house owner.” Han Qiuming took out his eyeglass cloth and wiped his myopic lenses, which were very thick, “The recorder itself should be the switch that triggers the scene, in other words, it’s only from the moment we find the recorder that all sorts of horror settings in this scene will swarm out, and we’re all safe until then.”
”That’s true, but no one can guarantee it.” Song An was physically the strongest, but not very bold.
”All in all, I personally feel that there’s no need for everyone to feel scared right now, feeling out the surroundings and memorizing the path is the most important thing. After all, his haunted house is an open scene with a complex internal environment, only then, when the recorder is found and all the ghostly actors in the entire scene storm out, can we escape with the fastest speed.” After Han Qiu Ming finished his analysis, regardless of whether others believed it or not, he himself believed it.
”It makes sense, a haunted house is no more scary than a living person doing the haunting, as long as we stay calm and don’t overdo the substitution we won’t feel the fear.” Night Careful tucked the note pad tightly against his thigh into his pants pocket.
Receiving Night Careful’s approval, Han Qiu Ming was a bit excited, and the only trace of fear in his heart slowly dispersed. He was about to speed up his steps and walk with Night Careful when his clothes were tugged by someone, and when he looked back, the insensitive person was the youngest, Du Chaoqin.
”Teacher Han, look at that.” The crowd turned to look outside the third sick building, in the center of the iron gate of the third sick building, there stood a woman doll wearing a school uniform, she wore a school tag on her neck, her head hung low, and her whole body’s joints were twisted and mildly deformed.
For just a moment, the dolls came closer to them.
”It’s normal, it’s the most basic psychological skill. Surname Chen is probably hiding in the monitoring room right now to give instructions to the actors, he wants to bring oppression to our hearts through the ever-approaching mannequins, because it’s easier for people to breed terror and uneasiness when they’re impatient.”
Han Qiuming told Xiao Du not to be afraid: “A fake is a fake, I used a similar routine a few years ago. Don’t worry, these mannequins will never dare to come within five meters of us, five meters is a safe distance, once the mannequins get too close the actor won’t be able to operate them, I can assure you with my own experience of nearly ten years in the business.”
After he finished speaking, he stopped caring about Xiao Du and ran to the side of Night Beware, commenting on the various arrangements in Chen Ge’s haunted house.
”This guy.” Guo Miao sighed and said to the few people around him, “All of you stay close to me, don’t just touch anything in the corridor, and don’t go into the middle of the sick room alone.”
”Good.” Xiao Du followed at the end of the group, and he didn’t realize that the mannequins outside the door also moved when he took a step.